Heat Race - Tanya Chris Page 0,6

it wasn’t Jack Henry.

“Nah, just checking. Figure Jack Henry being a dancer, he’s got the monkey skills to get up there.”

“Jack Henry? You’re chasing Jack Henry?”

“Ain’t everyone?” Lon cackled. “That’s what you’re doing, right?”

“Guess I’d be happy to claim any omega,” Saul lied. He hadn’t even chosen a backup option. It was Jack Henry or no one.

Lon snorted. “You’d rather have an alpha, I’ll bet.”

The taunt made Saul’s stomach clench, but he acted as if the jab hadn’t hurt. “I’d be happy with anyone I could form a mutually respectful relationship with. If an alpha happens to like—”

“Knew it,” Lon interrupted. “You may have a hard body, but you’ve got a soft mind. What would you even do with an omega? Have him fuck you?”

“If he wanted to,” Saul answered, even though that wasn’t what he thought about when he thought about Jack Henry. It was complicated. Sometimes he did imagine getting fucked. Which wasn’t wrong. People could do whatever they wanted, despite Lon’s backwards thinking. But when he imagined himself on the receiving end of a cock, it was generally another alpha he imagined giving it to him. A shadowy alpha, not anyone he knew but a sort of idealized version of an alpha, harkening back to their feral ancestors.

“That’s why you’re going to lose this race,” Lon said. “It takes a real alpha to claim an omega. Cutthroat, blood-thirsty, ruthless. You go ahead and be egalitarian. We’ll see who wins.” And Lon wandered off to peer through the branches of another tree.

Saul looked up into the tree over his head. He hadn’t even considered that Jack Henry might be above ground, and his eyesight wasn’t good enough to make out much more than a bunch of shadows. For a moment, he despaired. What if he really wasn’t enough for Jack Henry? What if Jack Henry wasn’t enough for him? What if his other urges couldn’t be quelled by fucking Jack Henry?

He plunked himself down at the base of the tree. His hand fished out the bandana almost subconsciously. One whiff of it firmed up his resolve. He wanted Jack Henry. And more importantly, Jack Henry didn’t want Lon. So even if Saul did nothing else, he had to do that—find the omega and keep him safe.

JACK HENRY

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At first, he just ran. The hormones on the air and the round moon rising—visible now, low and huge near the horizon—had him frenzied, thinking with his body, not his brain. To run, to hide, to be chased and caught. Both a victory and a surrender. It was all so much. By the end of the night, he would be mated, for better or worse.

The better had his blood singing. The worse had his heart racing. And so he ran.

But after fifteen minutes or so, when he heard the distant crack of the starter’s pistol giving the alphas their cue to begin, he realized he needed to be smarter than this. Pure running would land him in the arms of the fastest alpha. Or whoever happened to stumble on him through sheer luck. He wanted more control over who claimed him, which meant putting himself in a position to do the choosing, even though he hadn’t decided yet who he would choose.

He kept moving, because to stand still meant to be caught, but now he moved in a particular direction—toward his planned spot of refuge. The forested area the race took place in was big, but not endless, and enclosed by a chain link fence. The omegas, fueled by adrenalin and fear, would head for the far end where they would be easily corralled. So Jack Henry started sliding sideways instead of forward.

A long time ago, when he and Elias were too young to be alpha and omega, they’d had a tree fort. It’d been at least eight years since he’d climbed the ancient elm it nestled in, but he headed that way now. He moved cautiously, his nose searching out the smell of alpha, his ears picking up every rustle of leaves. The sky dimmed further, the moon rose higher, and the woods around him grew quieter, confirming that most of the omegas had run straight ahead. And where the omegas went, the alphas would follow. Only someone who bothered to separate his personal scent out from the horde of others would detour east.

By the time Jack Henry reached the fence bounding the eastern edge of the forest, he had the sense of being completely alone. The moon had disappeared behind